


Perspectives

by Pigeonsplotinsecrecy



Series: This Feeling of Fakin' It [3]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Binging, Depression, Eating Disorders, Found Family, Mental Illness, Purging, restriction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2020-12-28 20:27:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21142700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigeonsplotinsecrecy/pseuds/Pigeonsplotinsecrecy
Summary: Vignettes of Mac's eating disorder through other people.





	1. Jack Watches

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, this is probably very triggering so be warned (numbers will be used). And for reference, this takes place around the time Jack comes home in This Feeling of Fakin' It.

Jack sat patiently, trying to help Mac get through the meal. He’d just gotten home, and he was thrust into a world of eating disorders that he knew next to nothing about. He’d been trying to do research, but the whole thing left him a little dumbfounded, nevertheless. The behaviors seemed so irrational and so unlike Mac, and Jack was at a loss about what to do about it.

Each meal was a war, and Jack felt helpless as he sat with Mac through it. _I’d sit through anything to get him eating something,_ Jack thought, _even if it is painful._ Jack always made himself available come mealtime. He stayed there when Mac got frantic or teary, and he refused to give up on him because Jack, at this point, just wanted to make sure that Mac was eating something, even if it was measly portions that wouldn’t fill a five-year-old.

With Mac, a meal wasn’t just a meal. It was a performance, carefully choreography but agonizing to watch. Everything had to be just so, and if it wasn’t Mac wouldn’t eat it until things were how his eating disorder demanded they be. _I need to get him help. We can’t keep going on this. He’s going to die if things don’t change soon, and I don’t know how to stop it. He’s fading before my eyes, but he won’t let anyone help. I’m useless when it comes to this._

Before the meal had even started, Jack had watched Mac painstakingly prepare it. He’d watch as he measured the 20 grams of rice and put it into the rice cooker with 1 ounce of green pepper, and then he put the 2 ounces of spinach that he used to bulk up the meal into an empty bowl.

Jack watched as Mac measured 15 grams of chili sauce dabbing the sauce with his finger when the scale read 15.2 instead of 15.0. He wiped his finger on a towel, looking relieved when the scale fell to a safe 14.99. After the ingredients were in the rice cooker, Mac waited the necessary 40 minutes, sitting by the kitchen and watching as the rice cooked. He seemed so ingrained in it while Jack found the process so mind numbingly boring. As he waited, Mac would chew on the side of his finger or drink a cup of coffee to keep his mouth busy.

Mac always logged the numbers into the app on his phone, putting in each item no matter how small. Some days Mac didn’t want to eat simply because it was so burdensome to log everything he ate.

It was always a relief when the food was finally done, but before he could eat it, Mac would have to clean the rice cooker and kitchen before he could settle down with his barely there bowl of rice. If he felt he was being too urgent he’d make himself wait longer— ten, twenty, thirty minutes. When he was done waiting, assured of his self-control, Mac could begin eating, which was the process which drove Jack the craziest of them all. _It’s hard to keep patient when he acts like this. I just want to shake sense into him, but I know that won’t help. _

With a bony hand, Jack watched Mac pick up a fork, and eat the measly portion of rice grain by grain. He picked up a grain, put it into his mouth, chew for three seconds, swallow, count to six seconds and then take the next bite. Every third bite, he took a sip of water, letting the cool liquid soothe his sore throat.

After the rice was done, he ate the pepper. He chopped it up into 1/8-inch pieces and ate it the same way he ate the rice. Then, he continued the process with the spinach.

Mac was always hungry after the meal, Jack could tell, but he refused to eat anything more. Sometimes, Jack would catch him putting a piece of mounting putty into his mouth, chewing it like it was cud. When Jack asked Mac about it, Mac looked embarrassed. “Why don’t you just chew gum?” Jack then asked, and it broke his heart when Mac replied, “Gum has too many calories.”


	2. Riley Worries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riley fears the worst.

Mac was acting weird lately. It wouldn’t take a genius to see that but identifying what the problem was going to take more than intelligence. Maybe if she got all the geniuses at the Phoenix Foundation together, they could come up with something, but Riley was skeptical. When Mac wanted to keep a secret, his lips were sealed, and trying to break him down was only going to cause him to lock down more. Riley knew that she needed to have a talk with her friend. The team had tried getting him to talk several times before, but she figured that maybe a one on one talk would be more productive and would make Mac feel less like he’s getting attacked. It was worth a try. The worst thing that could happen was Mac blowing her off.

She rolled a desk chair up next to his head. Mac’s head popped up, and when his eyes met hers, she saw how tired he looked. “Hey,” he said, between a yawn. Even the five cups of coffee Riley had seen him drink didn’t seem to be doing much to keep his energy levels up. The hum of the air conditioning buzzed on and she saw Mac shiver as the air hit him. Riley had been sweating all day. Maybe she was getting sick. But it was ninety degrees. “What’s up?”

“Do you want to get lunch with me?” She wanted to get Mac out of the building for a while. Let him stretch out his legs and relax for just a bit. He was working too hard, and the dark circles under his eyes and lack of luster in his hair made her feel certain that he wasn’t taking care of himself. Yeah, he had a lot going on, but neglecting his needs wasn’t going to help anyone.

Mac looked almost alarmed at the suggestion like it was something weird. Riley wondered if she’d somehow missed something. Was there something she should have known? A meeting at two thirty? Or a report due at three? “It’s two o’clock,” Mac said, face blurring in a mix of confusion and something else that Riley couldn’t figure out. Two o’clock was later than Riley’s usual lunch, but she’d been trying to figure out how to handle Mac since eleven, and she’d only made her decision now because between thinking, she’d gotten caught up in her actual job. They were all busy, but busy wasn’t an excuse for not taking care of yourself.

“Yeah, and you haven’t eaten yet.” That’s another thing that was worrying her. It seemed that Mac was eating less and less. She didn’t think that it was intentional, but she could still it was hurting Mac. He was getting thinner. She could see more bones, and it made her anxious because a person that boney couldn’t possibly be okay, especially when he was already lean to begin with.

“I’m okay.” Mac went back to typing some report. She wanted to tell him to stop, pull his hands away from the keyboard, and drag him to some diner nearby, but she didn’t because if she did, Mac would only work harder and longer because that’s the kind of passive aggressive behavior he’d been doing more and more.

“Come on, Mac. It won’t take long.” He needed to eat, even if he was doing important work. Mac had a bad tendency of getting so fixated on one thing that he lost sight of everything else.

Mac sighed. “I have to finish this, Riles.”

“You’re working too hard, Mac,” which was coming from a woman who had maxed out her overtime the week before. “You can’t help people if you run yourself into the ground.”

“I’m fine, really. You go to lunch. I’ll get something in a bit. I just need to finish this up. I’ll bet I’ll be able to get lunch by three.”

“Then, I’ll wait.” She wasn’t going to let him keep making excuses for taking care of himself.

“You don’t need to do that. You’re hungry. Go eat.” Riley didn’t buy it. He was lying to her, and she didn’t know why or what about, but he was shrouded in secrecy, and she had a better chance of getting Sparky to be a real person that of getting Mac to stop being so stubborn.

“You’ve lose weight, Mac,” she said, voice full of worry, and Riley could’ve sworn that she saw a sliver of a smile appear on Mac’s face, but maybe she was seeing things that weren’t there. She didn’t know, but it made her stomach twist anxiously. She needed to talk to Jack about this. Something weird was happening here, and if anyone could solve this, it would be Jack. “Not in a good way. You’re looking gaunt.”

“It’s not like you have a lot of meat on your bones.”

“I don’t look like a corpse. Your face has no color, and you look a little gray. Plus, you’re clearly exhausted. You need to keep your energy up, Mac, or you’re going to end up getting hurt.”

“I’ve this all under control. Go to lunch. I’ll talk to you later.” Reluctantly, she stood from her chair, and Mac looked relieved to see her giving in. That nearly made Riley sit down and pester him more just to prove that she could out stubborn him if she set her mind to it.

“We’re talking more about this later if you don’t start making changes.”

“There’s nothing I need to change. I’m doing great.”

“You want me to bring you something back.”

“I brought some stuff, so don’t worry about it.”

“I won’t,” she said, but Riley ended up eating lunch alone very much worrying about it. Whatever was happening wasn’t just going to go away. It was something that endured. Something that was going to wreak havoc in their lives, and Riley was terrified that it was going to destroy Mac. He seemed mostly okay, but if things kept up like this, he wouldn’t be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading. I want to finish up old fics and tie up all the loose ends I've left.

**Author's Note:**

> Another continuation of my story that no one asked for (but I'm writing it anyway haha). Thanks for reading, and I have a few ideas for this already that I'm planning on writing. This also won't be a chronological story but will instead be a series of vignettes that I write as I please. Feel free to leave feedback!


End file.
